With the Big Data market poised to grow at a compounded annual rate of 58 percent over the next five years to become a $50 billion industry by 2017, there is no question that Big Data is a huge market.

Computerworld examines the future growth of Big Data and conclude that when combined with in-memory computing, big data holds big promise for real-time analytics – but only if underlying system platforms are architected appropriately:

“In the world of enterprise computing, Big Data isn’t a choice anymore — it’s the new reality.

Digital content is expected to grow to 2.7 zetabytes this year, according to a recent IDC projection. Ninety percent of that information will be unstructured web-based content such as videos, text files and social media.

Businesses use Big Data tools to analyze and derive value from those massive data sets. They gain competitive advantage in the process, however, that competitive advantage can only be realized if data can be processed intelligently, efficiently, and results delivered in a timely manner”.